If you find my Memo efforts of interest and maybe even challenging , whether you agree or not with what I write and/or post, then consider this a personal appeal to support my effort to raise money for The Wounded Warrior project.
Buy my book expressing my thoughts on raising children. Please make your check for $10.99/copy to Paul Laflamme for a soft cover version and deduct half the cost as a donation to The Wounded Warrior Project. (Add $2.50 for postage and handling.)
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Writer expects Obama to weaken America in the foreign arena? You decide. (See 1 below.) U.S and Israel on collision course? (See 1a below.)
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Boehner believes he can deal with Obama regarding immigration issues. (See 2 below.)
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And then! (See 3 below.)
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Valerie Jarrett chimes in and now you learn about revenge voting.. (See 4 and 4a below.)
Our 'derelict' president is apparently going to read a self exonerating statement at a press conference, at which no questions will be allowed, on his involvement in the Libyan assassination and then our 'empty chair' president takes off for an Asian Conference instead of staying home and offering a budget proposal and pressing Sen. Reid to negotiate so the fiscal cliff matter can be addressed.
Go Obama we are looking forward to more hope and change.
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Be on the look out for this: (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)Obama's second term will weaken American foreign policy Robert Maginnis President Barack Obama’s re-election will weaken America’s national security if his first term and campaign promises are any indication of his future actions.
Mr. Obama inherited a strong military but has already charted a course to hollow that force. Beginning in 2010 he cut $487 billion from the defense budget and in 2011 he signed into law a budget process that will cut an additional $492 billion over 10 years.
Further he threatened to veto any legislation that averts these cuts unless it also raises taxes. But his Pentagon has no announced plan on how it will make what Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta labeled “devastating” cuts.
These cuts leave America with a military inventory of ancient and broken equipment. Our tanker aircraft are on average 47 years old and our strategic bombers 34 years old, and besides, their numbers are totally insufficient for America’s global missions. For example, our air force shrank from 82 fighter squadrons at the end of the Cold War to 39 today and our navy is in worse shape.
We have a naval fleet of 284 ships and shrinking even though naval planners indicate we need at least 328 ships. Our nuclear arsenal will continue to decline in spite of the growing threat. At the beginning of his first term Mr. Obama “reset” relations with Russia and then quickly agreed to a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) that gave Russia a lopsided advantage. Specifically, it reduces our weapons and platforms while giving the Russians room to expand their arsenal. Further, his reset began with the withdrawal of former President George W. Bush’s plan to place a missile defense system in Europe without any reciprocal action by Moscow.
Expect Mr. Obama to further reduce our nuclear arsenal and anti-ballistic missile program even though Russia is becoming a global destabilizing force. Specifically, earlier this year while at a summit in South Korea Mr. Obama told former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved, but it’s important for him [incoming Russian President Vladimir Putin] to give me space.” Obama interjects, “After my election, I have more flexibility.”
During the campaign Mr. Obama repeatedly said Iran must not acquire nuclear weapons. But he has failed to outline a plan and if his past performance is indicative of the way ahead, Iran is likely to become a nuclear weapon power. Obama came to office promising to use diplomacy and sanctions to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But instead of slowing, Tehran sped-up its nuclear program and is now on the cusp of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama constantly talks down the military option which the ayatollahs interpret as weakness.
This strategy is potentially very dangerous for the Middle East and America. A nuclear-armed Iran would shift the geostrategic landscape of the Mideast, pose an existential threat to Israel, provoke an arms race with Arab nations, threaten Europe and America as Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities improve, and Iran’s use of terrorism will take on a new and dangerous twist. During his first term Mr. Obama failed to make America safer from Islamic extremists.
Even though he killed thousands with his drone attacks and eliminated al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, we saw radical Islamist’ influence spread like a wild fire, now consuming much of Northern Africa to include oil rich Nigeria, the source of 14% of our oil consumption. The Islamist threat is likely to get worse in Obama’s second term. There are an estimated 200 million Islamists across the world who share views that are radically different than Americans.
For them their faith and government are one and they are obligated to do whatever is necessary to replace secular with Islamic rule (Shariah law). That is happening before our eyes vis-à-vis the Arab Spring, which Obama encouraged. The Middle East is riven by tensions with Islamists seeking to expand control. Mr. Obama encouraged the transition in Egypt to a Muslim Brotherhood-run government, the replacement of the Libyan dictator with the current chaotic situation marked by al Qaeda-linked groups and criminal militias, and he failed to act resolutely to hasten the end of the Syrian dictator’s genocidal campaign.
American leadership has been conspicuously absent from the Syrian debacle which likely will end with Islamic extremists at the helm which threaten our ally Israel. Mr. Obama has no announced plan. Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East but Mr. Obama has been a fair weather friend to our Jewish friend. He poorly understands the dynamics in the region and especially the Israeli-Palestinian problem, which is not the root of Arab discontent as evidenced by the Arab Spring. Expect Mr. Obama to continue pressuring Jerusalem to compromise its security to accommodate Palestinian demands without reciprocal assurances on security.
Meanwhile, Israel’s relations with its big neighbors, Turkey and Egypt, are rapidly deteriorating, terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah are threatening, Syria is about to collapse potentially passing chemical weapons to Hezbollah and Iran seeks Israel’s annihilation. Our mission in Afghanistan is to eliminate al Qaeda and degrade the Taliban so not to threaten the Afghan government. During Mr. Obama’s first term he surged 30,000 fresh troops into Afghanistan but at the same time put forward a timetable for withdrawal by 2014.
Our enemy understood the mixed message and remains resilient as our departure nears. There is no doubt Obama will withdraw our forces on schedule but the growing chaotic situation in that country suggests once we are gone the Taliban will retake Kabul and neighbor Pakistan will further radicalize. A radicalized Islamabad, armed with at least 100 nuclear weapons, will threaten the subcontinent and especially our ally India. Mr. Obama has no announced plan to keep Pakistan from falling into terrorist hands.
China is both an economic and a military threat. It surpassed Japan to become the world’s second largest economy after ours and it has sharply increased military spending over the past decades. Mr. Obama’s new defense strategy pivots our global emphasis from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region. That means we will put more ships and troops in the region and develop closer relationships with foreign partners in order to discourage China’s regional hegemony. But will Obama do enough to keep Beijing’s hegemonic ambitions in check? China is already attempting to militarily intimidate or dominate neighboring states like Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam. It backs up that aggression with a rapidly advancing blue water navy, second only to America’s and a force backed by a modern air force armed with anti-intrusion (read anti-aircraft carrier) long-range ballistic missiles. China is an emerging world power that threatens America’s global interests. North Korea is an open sore protected by communist China.
Yet in his first term Obama granted North Korea a food aid deal only to see that deal violated weeks later when the communist regime conducted an illegal missile test. Pyongyang’s unpredictable dictator Kim Jong-un poses a direct threat to American forces in South Korea and will eventually pose a nuclear threat to our homeland. Further, it proliferates weapons of mass destruction for cash and frequently acts violently against South Korea and Japan. Mr. Obama has no announced plan to contain this menace.
Mr. Obama’s second term will be a mirror image of his first which translates into America’s dramatic weakening. Expect him to “lead from behind” cashing in American military power for his social economic agenda, kowtowing to our adversaries like Russia and China, accommodating rogues like Iran and North Korea, denying the rapidly expanding Islamist threat, and withdrawing from Afghanistan leaving Central Asia in a chaotic state.
1a)Israel and U.S. on a Collision Course?
By P. David Hornik
Some 57 percent of Israeli Jews preferred Romney, only 22% Obama (in my sector of American Israelis it was even more lopsided, a full 85% having cast absentee ballots for the challenger, only 14% for the incumbent). So, naturally, for the most part, November 7, 2012 was not a day of celebration in Israel. Israel, too, has elections coming up—on January 22. That has prompted speculations that Obama will now throw his weight behind Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s left-of-center challengers.
There are precedents for it, most notably in 1999 when President Bill Clinton sent a team of PR strategists Stanley Greenberg, James Carville, and Robert Shrum to help out Ehud Barak, then challenging Netanyahu (in his earlier term) from the left. Barak won by a narrow margin. The difference is that this time, according to all polls so far, the right-of-center bloc that Netanyahu heads will win at least as decisively as it did in 2009. The left-wing challengers (some of them again being helped by Greenberg) are already crowing that the Netanyahu-Obama tensions are the former’s fault, and he thereby endangers Israeli-U.S. relations.
Some say Obama will exploit this to stir fears among Israelis and shift the balance to the left. It seems, though, that even if he tries, he won’t succeed; Israelis’ perception of a dangerous Middle Eastern environment, and of Netanyahu as a leader realistically attuned to it, is too strong. Then there is the Palestinian issue. Will second-term Obama make a renewed pitch to get a state for the Palestinians—clearly one of his most burning aspirations when he took office?
Some say that, freed of concerns about the Jewish vote (which proved unfounded anyway), Obama will now go all-out to create another Arab state squeezed up beside a truncated Jewish one, claiming all the while that this is the greatest blessing Israel could hope for. Others contend that Obama, burned by experience, now realizes the pitfalls of such an attempt and, apart from rhetoric, won’t really embark on it.
Again, even if he does—while it may well involve further frictions with Israel and public castigations—it won’t get anywhere, for the same reason it didn’t the first time, and never has since 1937: the Palestinians aren’t interested in a compromise. That leaves Iran. Does Obama “have Israel’s back” on Iran, and is he prepared to do whatever is necessary, including the military option if all else fails, to stop this regime from going nuclear? Or is he actually a softy on all Islamic radicals other than Al Qaeda, into cutting the defense budget rather than launching another war, and likely to seek a “grand deal” with Iran that will absolve him from taking any real action?
The dangers of the second possibility were well articulated on Wednesday by Israeli commentator David Weinberg, who noted: A U.S.-Iran agreement could involve tacit recognition of Iranian hegemony in the Gulf region and acceptance of its nuclear status, in exchange for a long-term freeze in Iran’s enrichment of uranium to high levels. This would leave Ahmadinejad’s nuclear development facilities, including the Fordow underground center, intact, instead of dismantling them.
This would allow the Iranians to continue refining their nuclear skills. Even at low levels of enrichment this provides a framework with which Tehran can bypass Western restrictions and hoodwink Western inspectors. This despite the fact, Weinberg points out, that Iran has clandestinely crossed every “red line” set by the West over the past 20 years…and has gotten away with it. So any deal that scales back sanctions and allows Iran to keep operating its advanced nuclear development facilities, even at a low level, is a fatal bargain. Under such a scenario—with Obama having grandly proclaimed a successful deal while Iran keeps progressing toward the bomb under cover—would Netanyahu, now truly standing alone, make good on his vow to abort such progress by military means if necessary?
These questions stand to be answered in the rest of 2012 and in 2013. Meanwhile, Israel is not celebrating.
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2)Immigration
By Daniel Strauss
Speaker John Boehner said Thursday he was "confident" Republicans could agree to a comprehensive immigration bill. Boehner (R-Ohio) made the comment in an interview with ABC News released two days after President Obama's decisive reelection victory over Mitt Romney.
Obama's win was fueled by Hispanic voters, who made up a larger portion of the electorate than they did four years ago and voted overwhelmingly for Obama. The president won Latino voters by 44 points, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The defeat and those figures have triggered a round of soul-searching by Republicans.
Boehner offered optimism that his party could come to an agreement with Obama on immigration, a subject that has hurt the GOP with Hispanic voters. "This issue has been around far too long," Boehner said in the ABC interview. "A comprehensive approach is long overdue, and I'm confident that the president, myself, others can find the common ground to take care of this issue once and for all." Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Senate Immigration, Refugees and Border Security Subcommittee, called Boehner's comments a "breakthrough."
"Democrats in the Senate look forward to working with him to come up with a bipartisan solution,” Schumer said in a statement The president has said that immigration reform would be a top priority if he were elected to a second term.
In a late October interview with the Des Moines Register, Obama suggested Republicans would need to work with him on the issue for fear they would otherwise be abandoned by Hispanic voters. Tough, anti-illegal-immigration stances taken by many Republicans — such as an Arizona state law that pitted Obama's administration against Gov. Jan Brewer in the Supreme Court — appear to be hurting the party with Hispanics. Obama also helped himself with the Hispanic population with a decision to end deportations of people who entered the U.S. illegally as children. Speculation was high even before the election that immigration reform would be tackled in a second Obama term.
Boehner also weighed in on the Obama administration's healthcare reform law and the Tea Party in the interview with ABC News. On healthcare, Boehner said that there would be no more major efforts to repeal the law. Boehner also denied the idea that the Tea Party wing of the GOP has been the dominant influence within his caucus. Boehner was also asked whether Republicans currently have a problem attracting women and minorities.
"What Republicans need to learn is how do we speak to all Americans. You know, not just the people who look like us and act like us, but how do we speak to all Americans?" Boehner said. "Listen, we believe in the American dream.
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3)makes sense to me!!
Normal curve for those who voted for Obama's second term.
From -3 to -2 sigma are the Imbeciles who vote based on skin color, tone of voice, basketball skill, etc.
From -2 to +2 sigma are the Ignorant from greater to lesser degree ... from those who don't know who the vice president is, to others who think Benghazi was caused by a film, etc. They actually believed what Obama said!!
From +2 to +3 sigma are the ideologues who are convinced it's better the Country sink rather than let millionaires pay less than 80% tax, or let a woman buy her own pregnancy prevention.
God help our Grand children!!
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4) “After We Win This Election, It’s Our Turn. Payback Time.” (WSI)
This update was forwarded to me by a Wall Street Insider who indicated they received it this morning via a direct source associated with Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago.
Thought you would be very interested to hear of this. It appears this Jarrett creature is quite confident of a victory, and has every intention of making those who opposed her, and her boy, of paying dearly for their seeming crimes against them. As Election Day is nearly upon us, more and more are willing to speak outside the inner circle. Such is the case with this message received by me this morning from a source who has been working for us via Chicago for several months now. Their campaign appears increasingly confident, I assume, due to the now adoring media coverage of their boy’s little march with the commoners following this week’s storm. It has been a revolting display by some in our media has it not? Here then is the most recent report I received our Chicago source. I first passed it along to our mutual friend with no response, so now I pass it along to you in the hopes you deem it worthy to publish as its sharing will serve a related purpose with another I hope to secure a favor from in the very near future. And if you have any concerns regarding the source – don’t. They are being thoroughly protected despite their understandable trepidation. As you have been.
-And while our friend was clearly upset yesterday with how the storm altered our immediate strategies that were to have concluded this final week of the campaign, I prefer to believe all is in God’s hands, and if that was to be, then so be it. My efforts remain undiminished, if not my strength. I hope you share my belief and determination in that regard. That said, there has been movement favoring Obama over the last few days. Such is the reality that we must now deal with and plan accordingly. Crying nor profanity will assist in successfully navigating that reality.
HERE NOW IS THE UPDATE WSI RECEIVED VIA A SOURCE FROM CHICAGO THIS MORNING:
A rep from Jarrett office was in today. She gave us a finish line pep talk and then afterwards, heard her saying how Jarrett is very excited about a 2nd term agenda and a big part of that agenda is to punish everyone who opposed them during the first term and the campaign. Strange that everything was “Ms. Jarrett wants this, and Ms. Jarrett is looking forward to that”. You hardly heard Obama’s name mentioned by her which I guess reinforces what people are saying. Valerie Jarrett really is the power in the White House. I know that when her representative showed up it was like royalty was visiting. All the big dogs were lined up to meet her and acting real friendly and they gave us a heads up an hour before and told us we better “put on a good show” while she was here.
The part that really stuck out to me was when I overheard the rep say that Jarrett told them, “After we win this election, it’s our turn. Payback time. Everyone not with us is against us and they better be ready because we don’t forget. The ones who helped us will be rewarded, the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve. There is going to be hell to pay. Congress won’t be a problem for us this time. No election to worry about after this is over and we have two judges ready to go.” She was talking directly to about three of them. Sr. staff. And she wasn’t trying to be quiet about it at all. And they were all listening and shaking their heads and smiling while she said it. Pretty creepy.
Why are they so confident about winning next week? We aren’t getting any numbers in the office that has any of us knowing Obama will win. It will be close. Jarrett and her people seem so confident. Why is that? Do you have any information on why she is so confident? I’m worried. Benghazi was supposed to play big this weekend. That is what everybody here was bracing for last week. You could really tell the staffers were freaking out. Now nobody is talking about it. Like it was never a concern. Like it never even happened. Don’t you have people to help with that? What happened? You said it was going to be a game changer. I told some others it would be and now I’m kind of hanging out there. Not the only one around here who got a real bad vibe after the Alex thing. Help! Need some good news after today!
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4a)
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5) Many Right to Work supporters have called the last couple of days asking what will happen now that Big Labor re-elected Barack Obama and held the majority in the U.S. Senate.
Well I can tell you, the union bosses are already scheming to seize more power.
In a revealing interview just before Election Day, top AFL-CIO union boss Richard Trumka promised that Big Labor's Card Check Forced Unionism Bill will be a top priority in Barack Obama's second term.
As you may remember, the Card Check Bill would STRIP workers of the right to a secret ballot in union elections, allowing union thugs to intimidate workers one-on-one -- or three-on-one -- into signing so-called "union authorization cards."
But Trumka didn't stop there.
He even pledged to unleash Big Labor's forced-dues-backed political war chest to oust members of Congress in 2014 who won't do the union bosses' bidding.
Not only that, the union bosses will scheme to kill pro-worker freedom legislation like the National Right to Work Act and Freedom From Union Violence Act.
And then there's "Plan B."
In his first term, Obama wasn't shy about paying back his union-boss benefactors through the National Labor Relations Board and auto bail out.
Now that Obama is no longer accountable to the voters, be on high alert for an all-out assault on worker freedom through the federal bureaucracy.
The good news is, Right to Work remains popular.
This week, voters in Michigan -- long considered a stronghold for Big Labor -- rejected the union bosses' ballot questions to expand their power over workers and taxpayers.
And in January when the new Congress is seated, the ranks of U.S Senators who signed a Committee survey 100% in favor of Right to Work will increase.
But we knew the union bosses did whatever it took to re-elect Obama. And they're already demanding payback.
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